New York City’s election system is badly broken — and the proposed “fixes” from Mayor Eric Adams’ Charter Revision Commission barely amount to putting new windshield wipers on a totaled wreck.
Commission staffers flinch from facing the issues that skew politics far to the left, focusing instead on how low turnout in primaries lets small factions, such as the 60,000-member Democratic Socialists, grab the Democratic nomination and so become the prohibitive favorite in November.
So they suggest opening up primaries to all registered voters: Anyone could vote in any primary, so the Democratic line could be decided by unaffiliated voters, and Working Families members could jump into the Republican race.
Another idea is still more radical: Switch to a “jungle primary” among all registered voters, with the top two finishers moving on to face off in November.
Finally, the commission suggests moving city elections from odd to even years to align with national calendar, since more people already come out to vote when federal offices are on the line.
Yet juking primary rules seems unlikely to do much: The reality is that open primaries have worked no miracles in the many states that have them, while jungle primaries have largely hastened the death of the two-party system in California.
As for changing the calendar: The main effect there would be to submerge local issues even deeper below the waterline of popular attention than they already are.
This year’s Democratic primary already degraded into a “who is most anti-Trump” farce; it wouldv’e been worse with Trump (or his GOP heir) actually on the ballot.
Face it: The real concern here is the fact that sensible working-class minority voters are fleeing the Democratic Party, whose NYC enrollment has dropped 400,000 these last five years even as the ranks of the unaffiliated have soared.
That creates a whiter, woker primary electorate less concerned about who can make city government deliver safe streets and decent schools.
Thing is, those voters are leaving for a reason: In the city, as statewide and nationally, the Democratic Party establishment’s only priority these days is just holding onto power and keeping the cash coming in — which means protecting the vast, tax-eating social-services industry and the public-employee unions, while also emphasizing issues that appeal to the woke white donor class.
The commission’s main “fixes” are simply about giving the establishment a better shot at fending off the challenge from the left.
Meanwhile, past efforts to shore up the Dem establishment are making things worse: Above all, the ridiculous rules for public funding of campaigns, including the power of the unelected Campaign Finance Board.
City taxpayers forked over $100 for every vote cast in June’s primary election, with nearly all the cash going to a pack of progressives who (thanks to the supposedly “more fair” ranked-choice rules) were able to tag-team against ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Multiple “rivals “cross-endorsed Zohran Mamdani, then colluded not to attack each other, instead all running ads to take down the onetime frontrunner.
And that’s after the CFB invented new rules on the fly to allow it to deny funds to the incumbent mayor. (It later made up more new rules to limit what it paid Cuomo, too.)
The board also basically engineered Bill de Blasio’s victory 12 years ago, , by shutting down the campaign of his closest competitor for progressive votes, John Liu.
Taxpayer funding of campaigns was sold as making it easier for challengers to win. But incumbents continue to get re-elected at North Korean rates — unless the board decides to burn them.
Turnout, meanwhile, is lower than ever. In 2021, less than a quarter of all registered voters turned out for the mayoral election.
The Democratic establishment set up a profoundly undemocratic system to serve itself — only to now find itself hoist on its own petard.
And the mayor’s commission wants to rearrange some deck chairs on the Titanic rather than give voters a chance to undo this unholy scheme.